100 Proof

One foot on the speckled frozen surface, another on the shore, she skittered a stone toward the center of the lake, sending it like a prayer toward the middle. She felt the ice groan through the sole of her boot, imagined its slow heaving out there past where she could see. It had been an entire winter of this wondering if the lake would ever thaw again, whether what lay beneath her would finally give way.

She locked the door and closed all the blinds now, in the manner that she used to carry an umbrella or keep an emergency kit in the car. Out there, the world swirled dark and confusing, and she had stopped yearning to see out at any of it. Inside, when she didn’t have to leave for any reason, she lined up her books like sentries, considered the pictures on the walls all eyes on the situation.

“If I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t have shown up,” he said. “I like talking to you.”

She stammered around for a bit.

“Tell me what you want to say,” he said. “You should be honest.”

I may have found a kindred spirit, she thought. I adore how when we talk I discover unexpected combinations of words, I want to kiss you for days, every time you text message me I smile even if it doesn’t say anything, really.

“I like you a lot,” she said. “I want to see where this goes.”

The end of them happened so fast it left her stunned and weaving, like a bird that had just slammed into a pane of glass. The path once seemed so straightforward, and as she crumpled to the floor, she wished for another chance to take a run at it all, as if she could clear her vision the next time around just by picking up a little more speed.

She had grown used to tapping at the glass with the pads of her fingers, half hoping for a response, half hoping no one would raise the blinds and see her there. Over her shoulder, the moon rose, casting her shadow against the wall of the house.

She leaned her ear against the siding, listening for the heartbeats inside. In a minute, she thought. In just a minute.

They picked their way across the dark sand, approaching the edge of the ocean. The wind off the water wrapped her dress around her legs. He looked down at the outline of her knee beneath the twisted fabric, then out at the outline of the waves against the horizon. He wanted to scuttle, like a hermit crab, into the shell of her heart.

Though it was not her nature, she rooted her feet and waited, through the rainiest of weather, for him to arrive. She knew he was on his way, traveling as quickly as he could, his wounded heart flying across the stormy sky. When he arrived, she’d be ready.